CREATIVE Biography
JASON MASHAK (b. 1973) came from good Chicago immigrant stock to be raised in Hartford, Michigan, where he developed a fondness for black dirt, fresh fruit and veggies, ginormous lakes, extreme seasons, rock n roll, dad’s muscle cars and motorcycles, mom’s psych-101 textbook, and grandma’s encyclopedias.
His teenage years were spent (perhaps wasted) in north Georgia, on backbreaking manual labor, from which he learned about the grim realities of life primarily from Vietnam-veteran truck drivers and diesel mechanics.
His pursuits in poetry were initially spawned by failed attempts at song lyrics for several bands: Liquid Velvet, Deacon Jones, The Steppers, and Seldomfence. (Read Jason’s writings. Listen to Jason Mashak’s music.)
Moving to Portland, Oregon, in 1998, Mashak eventually exodused a successful sales cubicle (it was rather nice, a big square one) in lieu of receiving two certified bludgeonings to the head, cum laude, from Portland State University. Auspiciously, a few evergreen shamans and nymphs fostered his Great Awakening, after which he went into self-exile in late 2006.
Since that time, Mashak has resided in Prague, Czech Republic, then a small Czech village, then Munich, Germany, then back to the small Czech village, and now he resides in the second-largest Czech city of Brno, within the former Great Moravian Empire, not far from Vienna and Bratislava.
Mashak has worked for a couple decades in marketing communications, public relations, and analyst relations for the cybersecurity industry. Prior to that, he was a high school English teacher, sold stuff, and ran several of his own small businesses.
When not spending his free time analyzing ubiquitous propaganda in films and TV series, imbibing world-class Czech pivo and Moravian vino, reading, or having fun with his family, he sometimes writes and records music.
PROFESSIONAL Biography
JASON MASHAK has spent the better part of two decades helping technology companies figure out what they are, why it matters, and how to say so in a way that moves markets.
As a marketing and communications leader specializing in cybersecurity and B2B/B2G SaaS, he has built marketing functions from scratch, led teams across EMEA, secured coverage in Gartner, IDC, Frost & Sullivan, GigaOm, and other analyst reports, and contributed to growth trajectories that have included unicorn-building, acquisition exits, and European Commission partnerships. Most recently he served as Director of Marketing & Communications at Whalebone, and prior to that as Head of Marketing at Runecast Solutions, leading to the company being acquired by Dynatrace.
His graduate training is in education rather than business — a distinction that has proven to be an advantage. The M.Ed. built a leadership foundation in behavioral science, the psychology of persuasion, and a deep understanding of how humans with diverse motives process complexity to form opinions and make decisions. It turns out that shaping how a market thinks about a technology company requires roughly the same skills as shaping how a classroom thinks about anything else.
He is available for CMO and Marketing Director engagements across EMEA and beyond.